UCLA has reclaimed the licensing rights to its own logo, ending a bizarre agreement stretching back more than 60 years and potentially fortifying its athletics department finances, the California Post has learned.
The change comes six months after a scathing audit of a student-run organization that previously controlled those rights and clears the way for the school to take full control of optimizing branded products.
The shift could be worth millions of dollars annually to an athletics department that no longer has to pay to use its own logo on merchandise.
In a letter laying out the move earlier this month, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk mandated that control of commercial products that use the campus name, unofficial seal, trademarks and logos would be transferred from Associated Students UCLA to Beau Jimmerson, associate vice chancellor for business and finance solutions.
In an email sent to ASUCLA on the same day, university officials said they were making the change because of various factors, including ASUCLA’s accrued debt of more than $40 million to the campus in payroll and related charges, unpaid bills and expenses.
The arrangement in which ASUCLA controlled the logo rights for UCLA T-shirts, sweatshirts and other merchandise stemmed from a 1960 agreement between the student-run organization and the university. In exchange for ceding control of the athletics department, which was spun off into a separate entity that reported to the chancellor, ASUCLA received logo rights revenue.
The agreement — described by university officials as “unusual, if not wholly unique among peer universities around the country” — has increasingly come under scrutiny as outdated in recent years.
“The University is at a critical juncture when it needs to generate more income to support our students and serve our academic mission on their behalf,” UCLA officials wrote in their letter. “To that end, improving the overall performance of our trademark licensing and its contribution to the campus is an important part of addressing our financial position.”
The letter went on to say that UCLA’s brand values for athletics was shown to lag behind other peer institutions in Los Angeles and outside the top 25 nationally in earnings from royalties, licensing, advertising and corporate sponsorship revenue based on fiscal year 2025 data.
A university spokesperson declined to comment, and emails to ASUCLA were not immediately returned.
An audit of ASUCLA operations completed in February revealed that it generated about $3.8 million in royalty revenue during the 2024 fiscal year. As part of a revenue-sharing agreement, ASUCLA would cut a check to the athletics department for a portion of its annual proceeds. One person close to the situation told The Post that the athletics department received $1.1 million for the most recent fiscal year, with athletics officials believing they could significantly boost merchandise sales going forward.
The audit of ASUCLA trademarks and licensing cited a lack of oversight regarding domestic and international royalty agreements and estimated that the organization underpaid UCLA athletics $68,500 in domestic royalties during the 2023-24 fiscal year.
The audit, which was obtained by The Post, also questioned an arrangement in which ASUCLA paid $137,000 in business promotion expenses for a pop-up cafe in Paris during the 2024 Olympics.
According to the audit, that cafe fell outside the scope of an agreement requiring business endeavors held abroad to involve a separate royalty revenue-sharing agreement.
ASUCLA’s control of logo licensing rights became a point of contention in the spring of 2025 during a University of California Regents meeting to discuss UCLA athletics department finances.
Stephen Agostini, then UCLA’s chief financial officer, suggested at the meeting that the loss of merchandising revenue contributed to the athletics department’s dire financial situation. The Bruins have run in the red for seven consecutive fiscal years, the debt totaling $241.1 million and requiring a bailout from the university that brought the balance to zero.
“It’s a very unique situation,” Agostini, who has since departed his post, told the UC Regents. “The inability to access those revenues means we have one less tool in the tool kit to address the spending — not just in athletics but anywhere on campus.”
With this move, Frenk has restored that tool, possibly boosting the school’s finances for years to come.
